Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Bryan Appleyard
We tell stories to ourselves; of our journey from birth to death, friends, families, who we are and who we want to be. Or public stories about history and politics, about our country, our race or our religion. At each moment of our lives these stories place us in space and time. They console us, making our lives meaningful by placing us in something bigger than ourselves. May be the story is just that we are in love, that we have to feed the cat or educate the children. Or may be it is about a lifelong struggle for salvation or liberation. Either way-however large or small the story- the human impulse is to make sense of each moment by referring it to a larger narrative. We need to live in a world not of our own making.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Death
Looking back and thinking,
I cannot believe that this whole story,
Of gain and losses,
Was about a few lies hidden,
A few stupid moves across the board,
That none dares for fear,
A few blind thrashes at the unseen foe,
And desperate lunges at the seen,
You dont know what fear
When you know that it doesnt matter,
For you run far and wide across the vast spaces,
Searching for refuges,
Mirages in the scorching desert land.
You dont know fear either,
When your heart is numb and cold,
Can never raise a war-cry,
But only fight
To live or to die.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
You and Me
You were the strain of music that I lost somewhere in my life. One day I just stopped singing and lost you somewhere along the way. The songs that you taught all sang of how your tears would make garlands of songs for my neck.
Yesterday, when I remembered that we had required nothing but togetherness to be happy every day and how hours of looking into each other's eyes could bring in a new life after every parting. Then the song played on my lips again; but this time I guess I know how to make garlands with tears as well.
Islands
Today when I write our short, short story in words,
I want sunshine and laughter, tickles and giggles,
Naughty days and kisses, joys in our land of dreams,
But when words do come they have traces of tears,
A lost treasure, none can see or enter, a little space
A sacred space, where words are ciphers and myths,
Everyday a new script, with details added in for spice,
Beneath starry skies, on the seashore on lovely nights,
Music that heaven played with moonlight and waves,
Now silence, tears, aching hearts and burning memories,
Memories that never heal nor fade, written with fire,
Unreal, surreal, drawn with circles, colours and blood.
We wave desperate, deaf and blind, on either shore,
Having burnt boats and with tears, shout to each other.
My Roots Strangely
I belong only to you, my dreams.
I do not belong to my place that left as a child.
I do not belong to my family since it is all dead and gone,
with a few bones scattered in a churchyard long ago and far away,
I do not belong to the place where I grew up,
Beside the river green,
Where it was always fun to be playing in water,
Yet too scary to belong,
For there were rightful inheritors,
More rightful than me.
Nor do I belong to a family which calls me my own,
Though the blood that runs through my veins is hardly theirs,
Nor do I belong to some who call me by a sweet name,
They do not know me at all, am a familiar stranger,
Who nods and smiles and passes them by.
Its only you who know me, my crests and troughs,
My feminine spirit and tenderness,
My occasional clownishness in trying to belong,
To some name, some family, some tribe,
Where I do not belong.
You are where I belong, in the terrible silences
and the all engulfing tenderness that follows,
That is the space where I see myself,
As yours having a name and being
other than all these illusions.
Your Memory
Primitive, strong and wild,
This love flickers and burns,
In your eyes, near my beating heart.
Your name is my treasure,
I would never utter aloud,
And spoil it with too much use.
Your name brings blushes,
Your memory smiles as I walk,
Through the same paths.
Your smile, so innocent and fleeting,
Your face buried in my bosom,
In a season of silence.
Style is the man or is it the woman?
What is the importance of having a simple style in writing?
A simple style signifies clarity of thought and is easy to understand. Yet every day lots of books are published that are written in an incomprehensible style.
Do they have a reader in mind? Or are they meant exclusively for experts?
Do people really know what they are talking about? How can a book alter the way a person thinks if the reader is not all able to understand it?
Intermittent rain
I wish I could undo that turn in history,
I wish I could tell you how much this story means to me,
Of you being always near me and me being so blind,
Though I was always there,
Always with you in all your ramblings.
I have never called you by your name,
Or never dared to utter your name aloud,
Though this was where my mind ended,
Like a chorus in a song.
Now it’s no more I believe,
But who knows it more than us,
Who have only dreamt and believed
And did nothing else,
But remained silent.
Silence was such a crime,
Against you and me,
And the world of our possibilities,
And this now extends across,
Not just miles, but ages as well.
Your face
Your face flashes in my mind, my love,
When I try hard day and night to erase
Erase its impression and give me
Freedom from your haunting thoughts
Yet you come back in the rain
And in the bright sunshine
In the soft peach light of the sunset
Your voice, trailing across the miles,
The distance and forgotten times
To find a chink in my coldness
Built strong to keep you out,
Out of my life to keep me free.
Yet I am a slave to your thoughts
And bound than really free.
Needs
What do I need from you, my love?
A little understanding for thoughtless words,
A lot of shaking laughter for my clownish deeds,
And absolute peace about old scars, yours and mine,
The past, where I've known neither cares nor care,
When shook, can stir only poison in the stillness.
So lets only drink love wild from being us,
Let all the ghosts rest in dead silence,
While we rest in wordless bliss.
Sweet Nothings
Look my dearest,
See how the morning wears
The jewels of glittering rain,
See my love, my life,
How your tender eyes
Speaks in tongues myriad,
Singing of the words
Your tender eyes spoke,
Of blazing fires that lit,
Wet rainy mornings,
Eyes opening to delights,
Of you beside me,
Now flying away,
From bustling crowds,
Interfering noises,
Lonely hours,
Finally we have come,
Become, living stories.
Love
I never say I bring you only bouquets of joy,
Yellow flowers of sunshine and love.
Hidden beneath them may be flaws in me
Which may wound you and pierce your heart
Yet with the broken, tattered, torn, scarred flowers ,
Which call my soul, I bring you dreams
From the unknown land, where in the grass,
Little toes will step towards you with delight.
Rose for you!
A faded rose is not a worthy gift;
Yet playfully I offered you one.
A broken heart is not ready to love;
I waited for time to heal its wounds.
With the rain, my heart danced,
The earth blossomed into petals of joy.
But you were no longer around,
One for whom the roses bloomed.
Yet playfully I offered you one.
A broken heart is not ready to love;
I waited for time to heal its wounds.
With the rain, my heart danced,
The earth blossomed into petals of joy.
But you were no longer around,
One for whom the roses bloomed.
Words in silence
I was just a child
When roots of a tree
Ancient and mighty
Came to my silences.
With a thousand limbs
Words embraced me.
Ripples in still water,
Words moved life.
This untutored heart
Without knowledge
Of rhyme or rhythm
Learned a new music.
The universe whispered,
My heart listened,
And my hand wrote
In the silence of night.
Time gifted more words
Till love came as silence
And danced in your eyes,
Leaving me without words.
Love unveiled drapes of time
To reveal and to relive
An innocence, the heart had
Before it knew words.
A Proper Burial
I was only ten when I learnt about unhappy endings.
Like when I knew my grandmother had cancer,
I kneeled in churches, for God answers a kid’s prayers, they said.
She died and I didn’t meet her to say one goodbye.
She looked like a horrible nightmare,
Not the one you saw last, not the one you loved,
A swollen, ugly remnant of what was once beloved, they said.
Once botched goodbye, an unresolved parting for a little girl,
There were no tears for her, only numbness that didn’t feel real,
From that chirrupy girl who never gave her a proper burial,
Who died a little that day, with prayers unanswered,
Full of questions but never with answers or resolutions,
Now, I’ve grown older with bungled muted loves,
Improper goodbyes, giving up too easily, too too easily.
Conversations
When my friend speaks not,
And my ears hear not,
Who is it to blame,
You or I or us
For the careful words?
Whose story was it,
We all wrote together,
Amidst dreamy eras
And slow-moving time,
Your being there always.
From two ends and spaces,
Two identities meet,
As if by written by fate,
Peels lying on the road,
It seems like accident.
Days wander and flow
Nights silent and slow,
Together we built towers,
That threaten heaven,
And touch the sky.
Then in one careless word,
The fury of heaven breaks,
Like tower of Bablyon,
Our world crumbles,
Into understood niceties.
Will you remember how we began?
The tongues we spoke together,
Drawn by puzzles and threads,
Scattered through words at edge,
We stand, like strangers again.
The Sea and you
You jolt me suddenly,
Into whirlpools of desire,
Where I drown and lose
Everything that I have.
Again your eyes sing
Melodious songs
That lure mermaids,
In every known land,
Pulling me into you,
Making me drown,
Then tossing me back,
Innocently ashore.
The ebbs and the tides flow,
At times dashing against rocks,
Till I sit on the shore, lovingly,
Watching you sleep...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
